KUALA LUMPUR (April 17): Heineken Malaysia Bhd is donating basic food items to 3,120 B40 community members to enable them to prepare 80,000 meals over 30 days, with the aim of helping vulnerable families cope with the loss of income during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period.

In a statement April 8, the brewer said the community outreach programme started on March 26 and will continue until April 30.

It said the beneficiaries are Malaysians of all ethnic groups who are most affected by the current situation, particularly daily or minimum wage earners earning between RM600 and RM2,000 per month who have to support from 3 to 12 family members.

Heineken Malaysia managing director Roland Bala said the company understood the sudden transition that these families have had to go through during this unprecedented situation, and thus wanted to ease their burden by providing basic food necessities.

He said the first phase of Heineken’s relief efforts saw 120 families from the B40 communities around its Sungei Way Brewery and watershed area in Sungai Selangor, mainly Bestari Jaya and Hulu Langat, benefit from basic food items such as rice, cooking oil, eggs, biscuits, flour and hot drinks powder.

Bala said that for the second phase, Heineken partnered with MyKasih Foundation, a charity organisation in charge of driving welfare distribution to underprivileged families and community leaders.

“Funds for the beneficiaries are channeled directly into their MyKad to be used at selected supermarkets.

“Through this arrangement, each beneficiary will get to purchase 10 categories of food items for the next month, which includes rice, infant formula, canned food such as sardines and tuna, eggs, cooking oil, and biscuits,” he said.

Bala said Heineken has provided aid to 725 families to date.

“The community aid programme is one of the initiatives that has been identified to address an urgent need amongst the B40 communities.

“The company is in the process of identifying other programmes and opportunities to overcome the evolving and emerging challenges in relation to Covid-19,” he said.

At 11am, Heineken added 1.42% or 34 sen to RM24.24 with 106,200 shares traded.

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